Corporations

 

People

A feeling deep in your soul
Says you were half now you're whole
No more hunger and thirst
But first be a person who needs people
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world

Are Corporations people?

The SCOTUS, in Citizens United v. FEC opined that corporations are people and thus have the right of free speech.  I do not agree with SCOTUS in that case.  Corporations are NOT people.  The Constitution says that the people are enumerated in the decennial census. That census does not list corporations.  Yes, corporations are groups of people, and people have free speech.  But corporations are legally a special group of people.  If a group is liable for an action, then every member of that group is liable. If you are driving the car in a bank robbery and one of your gang kills a bystander during the robbery, then you are guilty of murder even if you never held the murder weapon.  However if the corporation  is sued for a wrong doing, your assets as a owner of that corporation are protected.   Only those assets that you have legally transferred to the corporation ( i.e. the corporation’s assets) are subject to liability.

The question is thus whether you can transfer the right of speech to a corporation.  If you can not transfer it, then a corporation, even though it is a group that includes you, can not own it.  Freedom of speech is an absolute.  Like life and liberty, it either exists or does not exist.  It can not be subdivided.  You can not give your life to a corporation. (You can give your life FOR a corporation, but it is still your life. You can not give your life TO a corporation.)  You can not give your liberty to a corporation.  You can not give your freedom of  speech to a corporation.  A corporation can not exercise what it does not have.  It thus has no freedom of speech, even though its shareholders have freedom of speech.

You dissolve a corporation, you do not execute a corporation.  You penalize/fine a corporation, you do not jail a corporation. There are no corporations on death row in Texas.  This is because while shareholders of corporations are people, society has decided in law that corporations are NOT people. Corporations can NOT both have special protections and absolute rights. You can not have your cake and eat it too!

Republicans VI

 

Back in Time

So take me away, I don't mind
But you'd better promise me, I'll be back in time
Gotta get back in time

Get back, get back
(Get back Marty!)

Marty McFly was right. I don’t think we are ready for this.

Single-ballot plurality-rule elections structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party such as that of the United States, according to Duverger’s Law. Throughout most of US history, there have been two parties.

The constitution did NOT envision the formation of political parties,  But from the beginning there were effectively two parties: the Federalists and the Democrat-Republicans. This led to the crisis after the election of 1800, when the Vice President, who was supposed to be the second-place finisher in the vote for President and the President and his intended Vice President, were both from the same party (Democrat-Republican) and thus received the same number of electoral votes. This ultimately led to the 12^th Amendment.

After the election of Andrew Jackson,  disaffected conservative Democrat-Republicans joined with  conservative Federalists to form the Whigs. This was the conservative party from 1830 to 1852. The problem is that while there were two political parties, there were more than two pollical beliefs:  Conservative Pro-Slavery; Conservative Anti-Slavery; Liberal Anti-Slavery and Liberal Pro-Slavery. The current Republican Party was formed not as a conservative party but as an anti‑slavery party. It included not only conservatives who believed in Government but also Know Nothings who did not believe in the expansion of slavery and Whigs who did not believe in government regulation.

While the Republican party was more conservative than the Democratic Party, it has had its own divisions. Grover Cleveland was elected president because of the divisions between the corrupt nominee James Blaine supported by the Republican Stalwarts and the anti-corruption Mugwumps. The split between the traditional Republicans backing William Howard Taft and the Progressive Republicans backing Teddy Roosevelt led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

The corruption of James Blaine and the segregation of Andrew Jackson has been combined in today's Donald Trump. Conservative, non-segregationist Republicans may split and form a new party as in 1830 or may serve to usher in only a Democrat Party rule. While examining history can be instructive, the future has yet to be written.

Closets

 

I’ve Had the Time of My Life

'Cause I've had the time of my life
And I've searched though every open door
'Til I found the truth
And I owe it all to you...

 “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”, but nobody should put anyone in a closet/corner.

People choose a cloistered life willingly because they want to have the time to contemplate and “see the world spinning round.”  This is their choice. And because it is their choice, they do have the time to contemplate, and society is often the better for their contemplation, when it is shared with society

The cloistered life is not dissimilar from a closeted life. However, people do not willing chose to enter the closet. They are closeted because society will not accept them as they are. They do not have time to contemplate.  Instead they have to expend time to cover up the reason that society put them in the closet.  The time that they could have spent contemplating  is lost to society.

How many "Eureka" moments has society missed because the time that could have been spent  contemplating was spent closeting. You can’t find the truth until you open every door.

The Republican Party

 

(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) Houseparty

They're dancing on the ceiling, they're dancing on the floor
People everywhere coming through the door
They know there's a party going on
Through the dance and romance all night long

Has the Republican (house) Party gotten out of control?

Nancy Pelosi has said that the Republican Party is needed for the good of the Nation. By that I assume that she means the party of Everett Dirksen, Gerald Ford, John McCain, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, George Romney, etc and not the party of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, among many others including he who shall not be named.

Speaker Pelosi means the party of limited government, not the party of no government. She means the party of careful reflection before action, not the party that acts first and gets itself in trouble. The party that acts for the country, and not for themselves. I miss them too! Where did it all go wrong?

People might point to the election of Donald Trump. Others might point to the rise of the Tea Party. Others might point to the Supreme Court’s decision on Florida in 2000. I would like to suggest that it happened when Gorge H. W. Bush accepted the nomination as the Vice President of Ronald Reagan. Somehow a Faustian bargain was struck and the branch of the party that mocked voodoo economics and supply side tax cuts, embraced those positions in order to achieve power.

A candidate who was divorced, and from Hollywood became the darling of evangelicals  (and if you believe that they share the same sexual beliefs, then I have some ocean front property in Kansas I would like to sell you).   A first lady, whose beliefs in astrology and the occult that would have gotten her burned at the stake as a witch in years past, became beloved by evangelicals  A president who was a former union leader  (of the Screen Actors Guild), and beloved by the union members, broke unions. A president who is beloved by the lower and middle class promoted a tax code that has benefited primarily the rich. If he had been opposed by the moderates in the Republican Party, he might never have been elected.

The consequences have been the immediate elevation of Justice Thomas, and the eventual nominations of Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Would we have had either the Iraq War, the Capitol Riot, vaccine and climate (not to mention science in general) deniers, if the Republican Party had not sold its soul. But the genie is out of the bottle and the Republican Party we need may be nowhere to be found. It may be time to shut down the Party.

Catholicism

 

Old Time Religion

Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion
It's good enough for me.

Can a Catholic be a US Constitutional officer?

I am a non-practicing Catholic. I graduated from both a Catholic Grade and High School. It was only after my eldest son nearly failed a required Theology course at Boston College, for daring to question Catholic beliefs, that I stopped practicing. It did not help that my parish church had been a previous posting of Father James Porter, the first Catholic priest in Massachusetts to be convicted of  child molestation. I had even previously been a CCD, "Sunday School" teacher in my parish. My High School was run by the CSC, the same order that runs Notre Dame, the University where Justice Barrett taught and graduated from law school. Boston College is of course run by Jesuits, and the Jesuits also run Holy Cross, the college from which Justice Thomas graduated. Justice Alito is of course a Catholic, as is Justice Kavanaugh. My fear is that the draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion will be characterized as a Catholic opinion.

While I was in grade school, John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was campaigning for President. He attended a Southern Baptist convention where he had to explain that his beliefs as a Catholic would not prevent him from exercising his Constitutional duties as President. Fast forward over 60 years and Catholic President Biden is being chastised by some Catholic Bishops for exercising his Constitutional responsibilities as President over his Catholic beliefs. Uh, guys, you can’t have it both ways. Are some Catholic Bishops now saying that a Catholic can not be President?

It is a Catholic belief that life begins at conception. It is not a Constitutional belief. The Constitution protects persons, including viable fetuses. It does not appear to protect non-viable fetuses, who are not considered the People by the Constitution (e.g. they are not counted as the People in the Constitutionally required Decennial Census).  As a Catholic, I can resent that the draft SCOTUS position on abortion is being characterized as a Catholic opinion. The SCOTUS was asked to render a Constitutional opinion, not a Catholic opinion.

Filibuster V

 

 

Happiness Is

Happiness is finding a pencil.
Pizza with sausage.
Telling the time.
Happiness is learning to whistle.
Tying your shoe for the very first time.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Senator Ted Cruz tried to dis former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki by calling her Peppermint Patty. It did not work because Ms. Psaki was flattered and liked Peppermint Patty. But it did point out that right-wing "Republicans" apparently read Peanuts.

I would like to make a point on the filibuster using Peanuts, the comic strip by the late, great Charles Schultz. Every fall, Charlie Brown tried to kick a football held by Lucy, only to land on his back when Lucy yanks the ball away at the last second. Charlie Brown keeps playing, and Lucy keeps frustrating him. It is a two player game.  Does anyone seriously expect Linus, or Rerun, or Sally, or Schroder, or Jackson .... or even Peppermint  Patty ....to yank the football away. ( Snoopy might… but only to be funny). 

The point is that there are different outcomes and strategies for a two-player game than for a multi-player game.  If Senator Chuck “Charlie Brown” Schumer wants to play with Senator Mitch “Lucy Van Pelt” McConnell and try to pass a bill, i.e. kick a football, then the result is that the bill is filibustered, i.e. the ball is yanked away. This is because it is a two-player, Democrat vs. Republican, game. It was never supposed to be like this. There are 100 Senators, not 2 Senators. The problem is that if Republican Senators don’t vote with him, Senator McConnell and his Party will retaliate against those Republican Senators. Because of that threat, it reverts to a two-player game. However if votes to end the filibuster are secret, he does not have enough information to retaliate. If Senator Schumer plays secretly with, e.g. Senator Romney, perhaps he will get a chance to kick the ball.

And that's the way it could be Charlie Brown.

Normal

It Had To Be You

Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.
For nobody else gave me a thrill.
With all your faults, I love you still,
It had to be you, wonderful you,
It had to be you.

So what does the Mean have to be for things to be “normal”.

Nerd alert. 

If there is an absolute truth, then the number of samples can be as small as one and you should still  find the same value, i.e. truth. The Standard Error is defined as the square root of the Variance divided by the square root of the sample size. Thus if the value is an absolute, and there is no error, then the Variance must also be zero.

Scientists try to reduce error and establish absolute values. In doing so they are reducing the Variance of those observations of the absolute. If the Variance is one billionth of a percent then, this is not zero, but it is very, very close to zero. The Standard Deviation is the square root of the Variance. If the Variance is one-billionth, then the Standard Deviation is 32 one-millionth of a percent. 

While reducing the Standard Error also means reducing the Variance and the Standard Deviation, knowing the upper bound of the Standard Deviation can also give the upper bound of the Skew of the distribution. If you know the Standard Deviation, then you know what percentage of the values that fall within multiples of that Standard Deviation. For example, in a normal distribution, 68.27 % of the values fall within one Standard Deviation from the Mean; 95.45% of the values fall within 2 Standard Deviations from the Mean; 99.73% fall within 3 Standard Deviations from the Mean. The Three Sigma (three Standard Deviations), rule is generally sufficient in the physical sciences. In particle physics, the standard is Five Sigma  (99.99994%). 

This rule requires that a distribution be somewhat normal. While the usual intent is to lower the variance, given a Mean and the requirement that the minimum value of a distribution is zero, it is possible to estimate the required Standard Deviation. If 99.7% of the values fall within 3 Standard Deviations of the Mean, and the minimum value must be zero, then the Standard Deviation must be approximately the Mean divided by three. The are several distributions that are somewhat normal but allow for a non-zero skew.    

A common one is the exponentially modified Gaussian (normal) distribution. In probability theory, an exponentially modified Gaussian distribution describes the sum of independent normal and exponential random variables. It will not allow any non-zero values. An exponentially modified Gaussian distribution will have a skew between 0.0 ( closest to a pure normal distribution) and 0.31 (closest to a pure exponential distribution). In an exponentially modified Gaussian distribution, the mean will always be greater than the median, but the closer the mean is to the median, the smaller the skew. Given a maximum Skew of 0.31, Pearson’s Second Coefficient of the Skew, and a Standard Deviation of Mean/3, then the Median must be greater than 0.897 times the Mean, which is equivalent to saying that Mean must be less than 1.15 times the Median in order for this to be an exponentially modified Gaussian (normal) distribution. 

As noted above, normal distributions follow the 68/95/99.7 rule.  That is 68% of the values are in the range Mean ± 1 Standard Deviation;  95% of the values are in the range Mean ± 2 Standard Deviations; and 99.7 % of the values are in the range Mean ± 3 Standard Deviations.  As noted above, in particle physics the standard is  99.99994% of the values are in the range Mean ± 5 Standard Deviations.  By making the Standard Deviation as small as possible the range of possible values becomes the Mean.  In normal distributions, the Mean is equal to the Median.  In slightly Skewed “normal” distributions, the 68/95/99.7 rule this means that 100% is approximately equal to 99.7%. This means that 100% is in the range Mean ± 3 Standard Deviations and 50% is in the range 0 to the Median. This means that a distribution is "normal" if (Mean- 3 * Standard Deviations)/2 = Median.  The Standard Deviation must be 1.5 divided by the Median multiplied by the Mean . If the ratio of the Mean to the Median exceeds 1.5, then the underlying distribution can not be “normal”.  A distribution can be made up of several “normal” distributions, but it might itself not be "normal".